2
Corinthians 4:3-6
Transfiguration
/ Mardi Gras
February
11, 2018
And
even if our gospel
is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of
Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we
proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’
sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who
has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
Here
are the actual minutes from a church council meeting in the Catskills:
“The meeting was opened with prayer at
6:07 p.m. The meeting opened with the lighting of the Christ candle as a
reminder of the God who leads, guides, challenges, and supports us. The council
attempted to light on fire a battery-powered candle. Then, when that didn’t
work, they lit a real candle.”[1]
File
that away under “You Can’t Make This Up.” They tried to ignite a
battery-powered candle.
I know what I like about that little
story. It reminds us how anybody, even the folks in a church, can miss the
light. The opportunity might be right in front of them and they still miss it. Call
them clueless, I suppose, or unobservant, or preoccupied with something else –
but they cannot see the light.
In the brief passage we heard a
minute ago, the apostle Paul says something else is going on. People can be “blinded,”
he says. He’s talking about people who can otherwise count their fingers and
discern different colors, but there’s something that keeps them from seeing the
difference between a battery-powered plastic candle and a real candle made of
wax with a wick.
More to the point, they can’t see
the Gospel, even though its right in front of them.
Now, I’m sure when some
Christian-kind-of-people hear this text, they blanch a little bit, because for
them, the Gospel is really obvious. It’s clear, it’s out there for everybody to
see and hear. If you’ve ever driven through South Carolina, seen all the Bible
billboards, the message is out there for everybody to see: Jesus died for our
sins, we are forgiven, that’s that. Just put it out there and everybody will
understand.
But that doesn’t always work. Back
in the day when my parents drove us around in a paneled station wagon, sometimes
we passed a big neon sign. In big red letter, the sign declared, “Jesus saves!”
I thought it was a bank. I couldn’t see the smaller words beneath (“Park Avenue
Baptist Church”). And I was too young to know any better.
These days, I would add that, just
because you put up a sign, it doesn’t mean the sign will transform anybody’s
life. The message must always have a messenger.
In recent years, a number of news
channels have gone looking for a Christian representative to give a perspective
on the issues of the day, kind of their token commentator, kept on a retainer
fee. I don’t know where they find these people. They don’t sound very Christian
to me – spewing hatred, division, exclusion, and doing so in an arrogant way –
they don’t sound like Jesus at all.
The Gospel needs something more than
a messenger; There needs to be some consistency with the message.
I lived out in Newton Township for
nine years, right along the Newton Ransom Boulevard. A few minutes before 5:00
on a Saturday afternoon, it became Newton Ransom Speedway. I had to keep the
cats indoors. It dawned on me that the heavy traffic coincided with conclusion
of mass at Saint Benedict’s church. So I mentioned it to the priest, a larger
than life character with an enormous laugh.
Msr. Bendick said, “Ahh, it's the mass
right before everybody goes out to dinner. Do you know how that mass concludes?
I say, ‘The mass is over, go in peace,’ and the people respond, ‘get the heck
out of my way.’ And to think that all the spiritual benefits of that mass were
quickly lost on those who competed to be first out of the church, first out of
the parking lot, first back in town.”
Go in peace, get out of my way. I
used to hear some of them honk their horns.
After Paul left the Corinthian
Church, a church he started, some of the people there were blowing their horns.
They were calling attention to themselves and making a lot of noise. The new
leaders thought the first thing to do was to put down the leaders who came
before them. “Paul didn’t know a lot,” they said. “He wasn’t very good,” they
said. “He had a lot of flaws, he didn’t have a lot of sermons, he made a lot of
mistakes.”
Apparently they attempted to prove
their superiority, putting on a good show, declaring a few miracles, trying to
pack the house so they could impress one another. In this letter, Paul refers
to them as “super apostles.” It’s sarcastic, like calling them “super duper
apostles.” He calls them “boasters” and “braggarts,” only interested in
proclaiming themselves.
And in their lack of integrity, they
were the exact opposite of Jesus, who comes humbly, who calls no attention to
himself, who gives himself freely to those in need. As Paul will say a little
later in this letter, “For such boasters are false apostles, deceitful
workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! Even
Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his
ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness.” (2 Cor.
11:13-15)
In other words, when it comes to being a
Christian, it is possible to fake it. Say the right words, but the heart is
evil. Say the wrong words but declare yourself the authority. Try to light the
plastic candle. Go in peace, get out of my way.
What
is interesting to me is not that Paul calls out the hypocrisy. God knows, there
is plenty of hypocrisy! No, what interests me is there is something about the
character of the Gospel that can be hidden in the shadows. That the Good News
is not obvious to everybody. That it takes some work, even some discipline to tease
it out.
We
know this to be true. The simplest essence of the Gospel is that ‘God loves us
even though we do not deserve it.’ That’s the simplest expression of God’s
grace. Yet there are a lot of people who do not believe they are worthy of any love.
There are others who believe they have to work hard to earn any love. And then
there are others who believe they deserve the love – but nobody else does. Each
is a spiritual misfire of the Gospel truth, that ‘God loves us even though we
do not deserve it.’
Where
do the distortions come from? In his
letter, the apostle uses a phrase that he never uses anywhere else. He says, “The
god of this world has blinded their minds… to keep them from seeing the light
of the Gospel of the glory of Christ.” The
“god of this world” – wait a second, Paul is a Jew. He only believes in one
God, the God who made this world, the God who loves us, the God who sends Jesus
to save and salvage us. Yes, there’s only one God.
Yet
the world seems to distort everything. If the world shrugs off God, it starts
to create a false reality and start lying to us. It’s the world that says there’s
nothing lovable about us, that all our best efforts come to naught, that truth
is merely another word for opinion. And then come all the other lies, that
might makes right, that some are superior to others, that the poor and the weak
exist only to be plundered, that if only you keep yelling loudly enough everybody
will eventually agree with you. In such a world, what is real? Might as well
grab what you can.
Well,
contrary to all of that, let me tell you what is real: light is real.
Years ago, I met a lady in a church in Philadelphia. She was the clerk
of session, and she spoke in a heavy European accent. At the coffee pot, she
said her name was Ilse – beautiful name. “I’m German,” she said.
When she was a small child in Dresden, her city was bombed in the
war. She and her family hid in the basement. Her mother said, “Don’t be afraid.
God will make a way for us to survive.” When the bombs quieted her father and
uncle pushed up through the rubble. Suddenly a shaft of light shone into the
basement from above. “Ever since,” Ilse said, “I have associated God with
light.” She paused, wiped away a tear, and said, “That’s why I believe.”
The apostle Paul knows what you and I know: there is light, but the
light is not always obvious. It may be hidden in the shadows. And that’s why
there’s an unusual word in the sermon title. It’s pronounced “key-arrow-scuro.”
I learned from a jazz record company, a company that now belongs to our local
public radio station. If you tune in after 10:00 p.m. on weeknights, you hear
the “Chiaroscuro Jazz station” on WVIA.
The name comes from the world of art. It has to do with the
interplay of light and shadows. If you look at Rembrandt, for instance, you see
how he shines the light on what he wants you to see, but there is always
something going on in the shadows.
That’s why Andy Sordoni and Hank O’Neal called their record label “Chiaroscuro
Records.” There were a lot of jazz musicians, wonderful musicians, who were
hiding in the shadows. Many were not widely known. They were extraordinary
artists, but nobody knew about them, so Andy and Hank said, “We have to bring
them out of the shadows.” Chiaroscuro.
The grace of God is like that. It is bright light, the brightest
light – but it is not obvious to all.
Imagine what it would be like to live in complete light – a
thousand two-hundred watt bulbs bathing you. Nothing would be hidden. There
would be no secrets. All would be known. All would be forgiven. All would be completely
known without any embarrassment or shame. And the warmth of that light would
feel a lot like love. Surrounded in light, we could live in complete
acceptance, feet flat on the floor, with no need to impress, flaunt, or
deceive. Everything would be real.
So why don’t we live like that? Maybe because the world and all of
its shadows have tried to convince us that’s all there is. But should the
bombing stop and the rubble be removed, the shaft of light is still there…because
it’s real. The grace and love of God are real. The glory of God on the face of
Jesus is real. We can live in that light. And if we live in it, we can shine it
all around.
That’s why we are here, you know. To encourage one another and
live in the light. And that’s why we make joyful music in the dead of winter – to
declare the long shadows of winter are not going to win. The light has come. The
light has broken through. And for our part, we shine that light everywhere we
go.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Minutes, Woodstock Reformed Church
Consistory Meeting, 10/03/201
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